Thursday, April 7, 2011

Springtime Purging: When Mulitiples aren't a Good Thing

I have a secret fantasy—a fantasy that, with my line of work, obsession with thrifting and Geminic tendencies will never, ever become a reality. In this fantasy, I breeze through life with a single outfit—bottoms of some sort, a base top layer, maybe one additional top layer, a coat, some jewelry, a headpiece of some sort, footwear and a bag. Each of these pieces is the most BITCHINGLY AWESOME thing you have ever seen. The whole outfit somehow encapsulates everything that I am and reflects my best and truest qualities to the rest of the world.

Perhaps this is really what I'm aiming for in my countless thrifting trips—that amazing piece that fulfills everything I have ever wanted in a jacket, shoe, etc. The One.

Well, I haven't found the One, but I've found lots of possible Ones. I've also found that once I get on a role with a possible One, I find other possible Ones that are very similar to the first possible Ones and before I know it, I have a whole closet bursting at the seams with possible Ones that are alike. This really throws my whole One bitching outfit fantasy out the window.

So, in the spirit of spring cleaning, I present you with the first of my fashion purges—items I got so excited about without realizing (or maybe just not consciously acknowledging) that, duh, I already have something shockingly similar to it (and no, unfortunately I have not accidentally thrifted two tie-dye jumpsuits). Not that all is lost. Despite my fantasy, sometimes it helps to have an extra set of tall brown boots laying around the house, should you (horror of all horrors!) ruin or misplace one pair. Sometimes the intricacies of one item fits the Best Outfit for the Day better than another. These items I am purging (to be thrown back into the world of commerce through our booth at the Handmade Heartfelt fair and our upcoming etsy shop) I have had around for a long enough period of time to know that they would be of much better use to someone else.

As they say, if you love something, you should let it go.

First we have the oversized wool Navajo print jacket. I think I looked so hard for one of these that when I found a second, I naturally thought that I needed it just as badly. I don't.

My first find, the best coat ever, the coat to end all coats, as I discuss here. I should have known better to try to recreate it with this one:

Thing is, if I didn't already have the best coat ever, this would probably be my best coat ever. The color is great, the buttons are amazing, it is heavy and warm. I need to come to terms with the fact that I don't need to hoard both of these, so my second (found during my feverish thrifting with Jake) is being sent back out into the wild.

In the same vein, we have the strange color combo oversized Navajo print sweater. Having similar sweaters is not nearly as extreme as having similar jackets, but sweaters do take up a lot of room in my closet, so one has got to go!

My first find, from the Halloween bootique last year. Despite the neck verging on being a mock turtleneck (vom), I am in love with this piece.

Chris found this while we were thrifting in Ironwood, MI earlier this year. I couldn't pass it up—love the bold colors, chunky knit, and, of course, the print. I've only worn it once though, which mean it gottsa go!

Now to the truly embarrassing point of this post—my hoarding of black leather booties. I know that at some point in my life, I had zero black leather booties. My only defense is that this time of my life must have been so traumatizing that once I started accumulating them, I couldn't stop.

These little numbers were my first. Actually found at a resale shop in Portland a few summers ago, I fell in love with the back zipper detail, the wrap around buckle and red inner workings. Since they are heels, I had to continue my quest for something a bit more sensible. So...

I found it totally justifiable to get both these lace-up booties and my buckle booties while Black Friday thrifting with Laurie (notice how there was a good year break between the purchase of these pairs and my first? Even more fodder to explain my obsession).

I picked up these numbers at work. I had to—they zip all the way to the back of the boot and have tongues. Pretty much the most insane understated black booty you could ever want.

So with all these amazing sets of black leather booties, why would I go for yet another pair? Well, I did, in Ironwood. I couldn't stop myself—something about real leather, the folded tops, the sensible heel...it was all too much. But, every good addict knows when to stop, so it is time for these to go.

The scary thing is, purging these multiples is just the tip of my springtime purge—stay tuned to witness further lapses in judgment, be it due to my belief that I can somehow change my shoe size or momentarily forgot who I was! Things are gonna get wild!